


Liminal

by fynnkaterin



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Drinking, Feelings Realization, Fluff and Angst, Gap Filler, Kissing, Last Night on Earth (Take Two), Let Aziraphale Be the Regency Romance Heroine He Has Always Wanted to Be, M/M, Turn Ons: Plotting Against Heaven and Hell, Using Your Occult Powers to Quickly Redecorate When Your Crush Comes Over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 07:05:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19458898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fynnkaterin/pseuds/fynnkaterin
Summary: On a late-night Oxford bus, which will soon be surprised to find itself in London, an angel and a demon sit in silence. Armageddon was averted just a few hours ago, but the mood between them isn’t celebratory, or relieved, or even simply exhausted. The electric light above their shared seat flickers as the bus rattles along the road, never quite coming all the way on or going all the way off, and that’s exactly the feeling in the air. There are no landmarks or signposts out the windows to indicate where they are, or where they’re headed. They are in-between.





	Liminal

On a late-night Oxford bus, which will soon be surprised to find itself in London, an angel and a demon sit in silence. Armageddon was averted just a few hours ago, but the mood between them isn’t celebratory, or relieved, or even simply exhausted. The electric light above their shared seat flickers as the bus rattles along the road, never quite coming all the way on or going all the way off, and that’s exactly the feeling in the air. There are no landmarks or signposts out the windows to indicate where they are, or where they’re headed. They are in-between.

Crowley misses his car fiercely. For a moment, he is outside this squeaky, stifling bus and flying past it, the Bentley’s wheels barely seeming to touch the road, Aziraphale pressed back against the passenger seat as though trying to put the maximum possible distance between himself and the inevitable impact. Crowley nearly cracks a smile, but it’s like laughing with broken ribs. Too soon.

To his right—and maybe this is what’s got Crowley feeling so out of sorts, he’s on the _wrong side_ —Aziraphale shifts very slightly in his seat. It’s the first time the angel has moved a muscle in nearly an hour. Crowley doesn’t know how he does it, how he just _sits still_ like that. Especially now, when the atmosphere feels like a lightning bolt could rip the sky open any second. A sympathetic crackle of electricity crawls up his spine, itching the edges of that region of other-space where his wings are folded up. He knows the angel feels it, too; he’s seen the anxious glances in his direction, reflected in the dark window. But neither of them says a thing.

Finally they cross the cursèd M25—no longer on fire—and shortly afterward Crowley lets the poor bus go, and they transfer to one of the regular lines into Westminster. They disembark at St. James’s Park Station, and Aziraphale steps out onto the grimy London street with all the reverence of someone setting foot on the moon, or some other holy ground. He looks around.

“It’s all still here,” he says.

“Yeah,” Crowley replies.

None of these words do anything to settle the tension in the air, and after a moment they set off walking again, towards Crowley’s flat.

* * *

Aziraphale has been to Crowley’s place— _places_ , various ones over the centuries—a handful of times, but the flat in Westminster is new to him. He hadn’t even realized Crowley lived in Westminster; the last place he recalls was in Mayfair. He seems to remember red brick. This building is grey slate, chilled as a tomb, minimally decorated and maximally secured. Crowley brushes his fingers over a featureless black plate set into the wall, and by either magic, or technology indistinguishable from it, a lift opens, and they step inside.

“Thank you again for the invitation,” Aziraphale says, as the lift (presumably, imperceptibly) carries them up to some higher level.

Crowley, who seems to be studying the floor tiles, reacts a beat late and only half turns his head. “’Course,” he says, distantly. Then he comes back from wherever he was, and adds, “Should’ve had you around before now. Under better circumstances.”

Aziraphale wonders, briefly, what better circumstances one could wish for than _having narrowly averted the Apocalypse._ Then he remembers why he’s here, and the loss of the bookshop hits him all over again. 

Aziraphale has lost many, many friends in his time on Earth, and he knows that a place, _things_ , cannot compare to a human life. So he is ashamed to admit that he feels this loss just as deeply as those. But he learned from the Romans about _genii locorum,_ spirits of places, and from the Japanese about _kami_ , and thought he understood. Perhaps it’s blasphemous for an angel to believe; but who could stand upon the Tianzi Mountains, or among the temples of Angkor Wat, or in a bioluminescent bay, and not feel that some unique life force flows through them? His bookshop, though infinitely more humble, had felt just as alive to him. It had been a friend.

And oh, the Bentley. He’d felt that loss, too, in the waves of grief rolling off of Crowley as his car succumbed to the flames. Crowley—who slipped through the centuries without holding onto anything, picking up and discarding fashions and living quarters and identities like the changing of seasons—truly cherished that car. Aziraphale thought at first that it was just another accessory he’d acquired, a passing fancy. Then he saw how Crowley looked at the car, heard him speak to it, and realized he was in the presence of love. 

It shouldn’t have been such a surprise. But deep-seated prejudices are hard to overcome, and he’d had it drilled into him for millennia that _love_ was not something a demon could understand, much less feel.

Thinking on that now conjures a sensation like some sick, knotted thing in his gut. He had seen Crowley demonstrate his capacity for love, _felt_ it emanating from him when he spoke of humanity and its wonders, yet still believed what he was told instead of the evidence of his own senses. He was a fool for so long; worse, he was not a very good friend. He would very much like to begin making up for that.

He’d dared to hope that, if they made it through Armageddon, it would finally be the right time to confront this and other unsettled things between them. Then that scrap of paper containing Agnes Nutter’s final prophecy fluttered down to him, and he knew better. 

They aren’t going to get away with it. Even now, their punishments are being prepared. He will not be surprised if the doors of the lift open on the hosts of Above and Below, ready to drag them both away to their respective dooms.

The lift does open, but on an empty hallway. He follows Crowley to a door, nondescript except for the doorbell, which is shaped like a snake ready to strike. He imagines people approaching this door, reaching for the bell, and then thinking better of it.

Crowley pauses with his hand on the knob, his head bowed slightly towards the door as though listening through it. 

“What is it?” Aziraphale whispers anxiously, but Crowley shushes him. A moment later, he opens the door and steps through.

“Sorry about that,” he says over his shoulder. “Didn’t get a chance to tidy up before I left.”

Aziraphale sighs with relief. “Really,” he says, following Crowley through the entryway. “I wasn’t planning on critiquing your housekeeping.”

“You might’ve if you’d stepped in demon on the way in.”

Aziraphale starts to ask _what,_ but falls silent as he steps into Crowley’s living room. 

The opposite wall is dominated by a huge balcony window that overlooks the Houses of Parliament, lit now with an amber glow against the inky sky. Sconces on the walls cast the same warm glow over the interior space. At either end of the room, flanking the doorways, are tall bookshelves filled to capacity. There is a small dining table to one side of the window, with a pair of chairs; at the other end is a large, comfortable-looking sofa. 

“Crowley,” he breathes, “this is lovely.”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Crowley drawls, taking off his coat.

“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way. But this _is_ a surprise. Your taste has always been so…” He searches for a word that won’t be misinterpreted. “Austere. This is almost _cozy._ ”

“Yeah, well, make yourself at home.” Crowley sprawls out on the sofa, as though demonstrating. 

Aziraphale drifts toward one of the nearby bookcases, something like homesickness tugging at his heart. He traces the spines of a row of books—a collection of the Beat poets—and then something in the next room catches his eye. 

“Oh, what _beautiful_ plants!”

Crowley is up like a shot. “Don’t let them hear you say that.”

Aziraphale ignores him and examines an oleander. “I didn’t realize you had a green thumb,” he says.

“More of an iron fist,” Crowley says, glaring at the plant. “Anyway, _that_ one is on notice. Care for a drink?”

“Oh, yes. I do think drinks are called for. We did almost cease to exist.”

“Still might,” Crowley says, and disappears briefly into another room to emerge with a bottle and a couple of glasses. “Probably time to break out the good stuff. What do they say—eat, drink, something.”

“And be merry,” Aziraphale says, taking a glass. “For tomorrow, we may die.”

Crowley fills both their glasses, and they toast. “Here’s to at least one out of three.”

* * *

“How do you know it’s that simple?” Crowley asks. The scrap of prophecy is sitting on a coffee table before them, which itself sits in a spot that had not contained a coffee table until he’d realized he had nowhere to set down his glass. He’d really been neglecting the whole furniture thing. It just hadn’t mattered much before.

“I don’t _know_ ,” Aziraphale replies. He’s got his glasses on, and keeps picking up and rereading the paper as though expecting it to suddenly say something less cryptic. “But I did notice that a number of Agnes’s more confounding prophecies turned out to have surprisingly literal meanings. One of them was about my cocoa. Anyway, I don’t think the use of _faces_ here is simply poetic. Or _fire._ ”

“You really think your side would use hellfire?” Crowley asks. “I thought the Almighty didn’t go in for that sort of thing anymore. New covenant and all that.”

“I don’t think She is who we need to worry about. The Archangels seem to be acting unilaterally these days.” He frowns. “Quadrilaterally?”

Crowley shrugs. Geometry, what.

“The point is, it isn’t God’s wrath I’m afraid of. It’s Gabriel’s, and suffice to say _he_ takes vengeance to Biblical levels. Old Testament.”

“ _Fuck_ Gabriel,” Crowley says, with feeling, suddenly very angry at the thought of Aziraphale being _afraid_ of that absolute prick. “You’re ten times the angel he is.”

Aziraphale blushes, though it might be just the drink. “I appreciate the sentiment. But he does have the power to destroy me, and I daresay he has the motivation.”

“Well, that’s not gonna happen.” Crowley finishes off his glass and clunks it onto the table decisively. “All right. If you think Agnes is telling us to swap faces, that’s what we’ll do. She’s been dead on so far, right?”

“Every time,” Aziraphale says. “ _Nice and accurate_.”

“Then we’ll do it. I’ve been waiting a long time to wipe that smirk off Gabriel’s chiseled face. Besides,” he considers, “if we don’t do _something_ , we’re good as dead anyway.”

“Not quite looking on the bright side,” Aziraphale says glumly.

“Angel,” he replies, “sometimes there’s not one.”

* * *

There _can_ be a bright side to facing down your death, if you’re in good company while doing it, and there’s no one Aziraphale would rather face death with than Crowley.

He realizes this, in so many words, while Crowley is off on some tangent about the time he tried to explain reality television to the hordes of Hell. He’s gesturing animatedly, bourbon nearly (but miraculously not) sloshing out of the glass in his hand, and Aziraphale is tucked comfortably into the bend of the sofa, listening and watching as Crowley tells the story with his whole body, and he thinks, _I’m not ready for this to be over yet._

Something of this must show on his face, because Crowley stops mid-story and asks, “What’s wrong, angel?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he says, forcing a smile that doesn’t even feel convincing. “Please, go on.”

“Right,” Crowley says, and sets down his drink, shifts around so his whole body is facing Aziraphale, one arm draped over the back of the couch. “Six thousand years, angel, and you’re still terrible at lying. What’s on your mind?”

Aziraphale sighs resignedly, regretting having ruined the moment, but the relief of confession is too much to resist. “Crowley,” he says, “this _can’t_ be the end.”

“What are you talking about?” Crowley asks. “It’s not the end. Nothing’s ending. We’re going to get the bastards. We’ve got a plan—” he leans in confidentially, as though someone could be listening, “—a good plan. They’ll never see it coming.”

“But what if it doesn’t work?” There’s a whine in his voice now that he hates; it always means he’s falling apart, and he tries so hard to stay solid and sure and whole. “I’m not ready to… to be finished. I really felt like I was just getting the hang of this, you know? And, and there’s still so much to see, Crowley, there’s so much of the world we haven’t seen. We’ve barely touched the Americas, and I know how you feel about crossing the ocean, but it really is worth it, and there just should’ve been more time. I can’t believe we’ve wasted so much time.”

“Aziraphale.” There’s something about the way Crowley says his name, which he doesn’t do very often. Somehow from his mouth it has a gravity to it, a reassuring weight. Crowley does another rare thing then: he reaches up and takes off his sunglasses. In this light, his eyes are like amber, like whiskey or honey. “Let me tell you something about Hell,” he says. “If you go in thinking you’ve already lost, then you _will_ be lost. There’s no hope down there, angel, except what you bring with you. So listen to me: this _is not_ how it ends for us. We _are_ going to pull this off. And then we’ll go see all these things you want to see, all right? All of them. Even America. Wherever you want to go.”

 _Wherever you want to go._ It’s like an echo, familiar. Crowley has made him this offer many times before; sometimes Aziraphale has even taken him up on it. It should have been every time. _It will be,_ he tells himself, _from now on._

“All right,” he says, and Crowley’s eyes search his as though to affirm that he means it. He must approve of what he finds, because he smiles, then. Another too-rare thing, a wonder so difficult to look away from.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Aziraphale says, and gives his head a shake to clear it. “Too much bourbon, you know. It always makes me maudlin.”

“It does,” Crowley agrees. “You’re better suited to things that bubble. There’s a nice moscato around here somewhere, that always cheers you up.” He starts to stand.

“No, no, let me get it,” Aziraphale says, waving him back down. “Been sitting too long anyway. Back through here, is it?” He moves towards the plant room.

“Left and then straight back,” Crowley says. 

Aziraphale turns left, finds himself in a little kitchenette he hadn’t noticed before. It looks nice, though unused, not even a water spot in the steel sink or on the black marble countertop. Of course, Crowley has never cared much for food. Strange, then, how much of their relationship has been built on lunch dates.

There’s one thing out of place in the kitchen, one sign of life: a thermos, opened and set upside down on a tea towel to dry. The pattern, a pale tartan, is _very_ familiar. 

Aziraphale approaches it like a priceless relic in a museum display. He had forgotten. No, that wasn’t true; he’d pushed it out of his mind. A painful memory, laced with regret.

_Maybe one day we could… I don’t know, go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz._

_I’ll give you a lift. Anywhere you want to go._

_…You go too fast for me, Crowley._

It was the truth, what he said back then. But not, as they say, the whole truth.

He turns away. Left and then straight back, Crowley had said. Somewhere around here. It would make sense for Crowley to keep his spirits near the kitchen, surely, but there is no wine rack on the counter, no refrigerator, nowhere obvious they could be stored. Left from the next room, maybe? He moves towards the hallway, and then stops, and stares.

There is a statue at the far end of the corridor. It takes his memory a moment to place it, but his heart must be ahead of the game, because it skips a beat, and only then does he remember.

The rubble of a church. A satchel of books thought lost. He had hardly noticed the soaring bird before, and only briefly registered it afterwards as the only other thing to have survived the impact. In between, for a moment, the world had collapsed to a space only wide enough for two souls.

He knew, then. Oh, he should have known long before; but we hide things from ourselves, don’t we? Love is supposed to be as easy and familiar to an angel as it is unfathomable for a demon. Yet it was Crowley who offered him love as easily as handing over that satchel of books, casual as everyday, natural as breathing. As though he didn’t even notice how monumental it was, how dangerous, that he was breaking every rule and defying everything Aziraphale had been taught.

Angels don’t change. If they do, they cease to be angels. Aziraphale remembers the Fall, as they all do; he knows what happens to angels who bend the rules and test the boundaries. He was terrified ever after of Falling, fretted over every choice and action, tried so hard to be a Good Angel. When he met Crowley, upon the wall, he thought: tempter, corruptor. Aziraphale tried not to listen to him as he asked all those questions, asked and asked and asked. It was so enticing, though, the thought of having someone to really talk with. And so little by little he had let the serpent in, and found that he was quite nice company, after all. 

He tried to keep boundaries. Angel, demon. The Arrangement. Enemies, not friends, just friends. He was careful. And then Crowley would just say something so easily— _anywhere you want, wherever you are, together_ —and he would feel himself begin to fall, to Fall.

He feels it now, looking at this soaring bird, and realizing he was wrong about Crowley not holding onto things. There are many things he has been wrong about. He does not know how much time he has to set them right.

Heaven has no claim on him, he knows. There is nothing to keep him from falling.

He goes back into the living room, where Crowley has risen from the sofa and is browsing the bookshelves, seemingly lost in thought. It’s a moment before he notices Aziraphale standing there. He looks up.

Aziraphale says, with only a slight tremor, “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“You weren’t gone that long,” Crowley says. 

He isn’t aware of crossing the space between them, and then he has Crowley’s face in his hands, mouth against his mouth, and oh, if this is what it feels like to Fall, he will gladly spend the rest of eternity doing it. Crowley makes a small surprised noise into his mouth, and then his hands are in Aziraphale’s hair and clutching at his shirt and holding him, close as he can get, like nothing in the universe could pry him away.

Angels don’t need to breathe. This comes in handy sometimes, such as when you want to keep kissing someone until all the stars go out, without needing to come up for air. So it’s a shame that angels don’t do much kissing.

Aziraphale is pinned between Crowley’s body and the bookshelf, and Crowley is pressing kisses to his neck and his jaw and whispering, hissing, into his ear, “ _We can still run away together, please, angel, run away with me._ ”

It is next to impossible not to give him what he wants. Aziraphale knows in this moment that he, too, would’ve eaten the apple.

“No running,” he says, his voice steadier than his convictions, as Crowley continues to silently plead his case with hands and lips and tongue. “We have to fight. Just once more.”

Crowley pulls back just enough to look at him, to fix him with those beautiful, otherworldly eyes. “I can’t lose you, Aziraphale,” he says. “Not now. Not ever again. Please.”

He cradles Crowley’s face in his hands. _This face,_ he thinks. _My favorite sight of all the wonders of the world._ He says, and believes, “We won’t lose.”

“How are you so sure all of a sudden?” Crowley asks. 

“Because I am yours,” Aziraphale says. “And there is nothing in Heaven or Hell that could keep me from returning to you.”

The look in Crowley’s eyes, the awe and reverence and infinite, all-consuming _love_ … Aziraphale wishes he could capture this to show the other angels, to say, _See, this is worth fighting for. It is worth falling for. This is the closest we come to the Divine._ He will settle for trying to keep this look in Crowley’s eyes for the rest of eternity.

Crowley kisses him this time, and they don’t stop until the sunrise bathes the room in the colors of fire. For the first time, Aziraphale doesn’t fear the flames.

* * *

For a long time after Falling, Crowley wasn’t afraid of anything. The worst had already happened, so he thought. He had made it several millennia still believing he wasn’t afraid of anything, and probably would believe it still if he hadn’t noticed he was in love.

 _Oh, how the mighty have fallen, indeed,_ he remembers thinking. The Serpent that tempted Eve, the world’s first and only resident demon, utterly and completely terrified that he loved someone who could never love him back. The irony of falling for someone who, inherently, must love all other beings _except you…_ For the past several centuries, nothing in the universe had truly terrified Crowley except the possibility that Aziraphale would find out, and that he would make it clear once and for all that Crowley was unworthy of his love. Crowley had been prepared to maintain this fear until the end of time, because the alternative was surely, infinitely worse.

Instead, Aziraphale had gone and done the unthinkable: he loved Crowley _back._

Crowley is still trying to wrap his mind around this. There was a brief period of distraction from the issue while he and Aziraphale swapped bodies, taunted and tricked the forces of Heaven and Hell, and won themselves at least a brief respite from their respective sides’ war games. Which was much less fun than he’d hoped. He hadn’t even been able to properly enjoy breathing hellfire at Gabriel, he was so sick with worry for his angel.

 _His_ angel.

Possessiveness is a sin; never really one of his favorites, though. But after his sojourn in Heaven, seeing firsthand how they treat Aziraphale, how they sentenced him to extinction without even the pretense of a trial Hell had granted Crowley, he gets it. If and when Heaven decides to tie up loose ends, and they come back for Aziraphale, they will have to get through Crowley first.

For now, though, the two of them will be left alone. For now, he is lounging in the bookshop—made new in the aftermath of the apocalypse, just as his Bentley was made new, just as Crowley himself feels made new—while Aziraphale inspects every single book, occasionally calling out to him about a new discovery. Tomorrow they will have dinner reservations, but tonight they’re staying in.

It is late Sunday afternoon, twenty-four hours after the world almost ended. An angel and a demon sit in silence—Aziraphale reading one of his favorite books, Crowley with his head on his angel’s shoulder, drifting off to sleep—and finally, there is nothing between them left unsaid.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr and Twitter @fynnkaterin


End file.
